Graphic Organizers/Pre-Writing Ideas
and Essay Writing Resources for teachers

Brainstorm worksheet: cluster diagram (PDF)

Outline worksheet for an academic paragraph (PDF)

Holt Rinehart and Winston samples: Graphic Organizers
(one of the most  useful resources  on the Net for encouraging critical thinking foracademic essays)

More Graphical Organizers for Essays

Essay Writing Outlines

Template for a Basic 5-Paragraph Essay (PDF)

Essay outline guide & worksheet (PDF)

General Essay Outline (PDF)

Blank Essay Outline(word doc)

OUP Explorations 1 workbook sample- pre-writing strategies..quickwriting, cluster diagrams etc. (PDF)

Comparison/contrast outline (pdf)

Cause/Effect Outline (pdf)

Finding & writing the main idea in paragraphs

Writing main ideas practice- with picture cues (PDF)

Writing the main idea for medical topics
with picture cues (PDF)

Guessing the main idea of each paragraph (word)
and other main idea exercises (click here)

Write the main idea for groups of words (word)

Write the common subject for each group of words (or "write a good title for each list").

Read the short paragraphs and select the main idea

Finding, underlining and writing the main idea

Sentence writing exercises

Mark the correct parallel sentence a or b (PDF)

4  different kinds of  parallel structure recognition
exercises for parallel structure ***

3 kinds of faulty parallelism exercises

Rewrite the sentences so they are parallel (PDF)

Read through the parallel series below and circle the element in each that is not parallel

Read the following example sentences and revise any that do not use parallel structure PDF)

Rewrite the faulty sentences using parallel structure
(advanced) (word)

Faulty Parallelism: correct the faulty parallelism in the following sentences.(PDF)





Introductory/elementary writing activities

Elementary sentence writing worksheets (PDF)

Writing simple sentences worksheet (PDF)

Describing a person
model (PDF)
worksheet (PDF)

Describing a Room: vocabulary & worksheets
model (PDF)
worksheet (PDF)

Describing How to Get to a Shop or Restaurant
model (PDF)
worksheet (PDF)

"A Day at the Ocean" writing activity (PDF)

Introductions, attention getters/grabbers / leads /hooks for  elementary essay writing students

Using pictures to teach attention getters (PDF)

Writing catchy introductions worksheet  (PDF)

Attention getters guide (PDF)

Introductory Paragraph: Hook Strategies worksheet
(PDF)

Writing Your Introduction: 4 styles with examples

9 ways of  "getting the reader’s attention"

The introduction should be designed to attract the reader's attention and give them an idea of the essay's main argument (examples)

Exercises for topic  & support sentences

Writing support sentences for an opinion paragraph
about television with pictures (PDF)

Writing topic sentences and  detail sentences
lesson (PDF)

Writing the topic sentence (PDF)

Writing exciting topic sentences (PDF)

Write a topic sentence for each of these paragraphs.
(PDF)

Topic sentences & paragraphs (PDF)

Match topic sentences to the paragraphs (PDF)

Underline the topic sentence-winter sports (PDF)

Write and find topic sentences (PDF)

Writing exciting paragraphs (PDF)

Fill in each blank with the topic sentence (word)

Write support sentences (PDF)

Put a ring around the letter that corresponds to what you think is the topic sentence(PDF)

Write topic sentences for paragraphs-business
related (PDF)

For each limited topic below, select the two items that could serve as topic sentences

Rewrite the following paragraphs by joining simple sentences into complex and compound ones

One sentence in each of the following pairs is the topic sentence. (PDF)

Exercises for writing topic and support sentences